


I’ll find you believing I’ll be found

by Silybum



Series: the minor sin of indulgence [1]
Category: Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 | Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Characters - Freeform, Other Fandoms Not Mentioned in Tags, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27771703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silybum/pseuds/Silybum
Summary: These may be different worlds, but they still manage to find each other, for better or worse.2) Fire Emblem: Three Houses!AU Part II. Al can turn back time and he has done just that more times than he can count just to save Priscilla. It's too bad that his goals don't exactly align with those of the goddess who granted him this ability in the first place.
Relationships: Natsuki Subaru & Various
Series: the minor sin of indulgence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031643
Comments: 25
Kudos: 40





	1. time and tide wait for no man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Fire Emblem: Three Houses!AU Part I. Five years ago, Subaru had been just another student at the Officers Academy, not expecting having to face the friends he had made in the war that broke out just before graduation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is Re:Zero, but please take the Major Character Death warning seriously for this chapter. This story has spoilers for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Please enjoy this AU featuring Priscilla as Edelgard, Reinhard as Dimitri and Subaru as Claude, except not really.

Subaru had always been, was, is, will remain, an idiot.

Even here, at the end of it all, this would remain true and he knew it.

And he was dying, now, finally, surprisingly enough, and he couldn’t even feel disappointed in himself because he had been dying for five years, slowly but steadily, inexorably inching towards this end, crawling over his belly and over his own entrails just to reach this moment, as had all of them, the living and the dying that he once loved. He’d like to have kept enough of himself to want to ask just when they all had made the wrong choice that led to this.

Somewhere, at some point, at some crossroad of his life, he must have chosen the very worst of choices to have ended up like this. It was easier and kinder to think that than to let himself believe that all his choices had been the wrong ones.

And, as expected, his tale began and ended in the same way as most of his peers, with the thing that haunted so many of them; it began as it would end: with blood.

Subaru’s blood was about as common as puddle water. Worse, even. His parents had been refugees, fleeing in search of kinder place to live, with nothing but their skills and dogged determination to give their only child a good life to see them through. And they had, for a while. They both had died at the hands of people who saw black hair and thougth of ill omens. They both had died protecting Subaru, barely seven and already fully aware of how unfair this world was. Subaru had survived because he was lucky enough to be saved by a passing mage, goddess-touched, even if her hair was short it was unmistakably silver, and her fury had been enough to scare off the mob. He had been taken in by her and raised as her own. Aunt Fortuna, her brother and her niece, Emilia, goddess-touched like herself, had become a second family to Subaru. Even so, it had been Emilia who had saved him in other subtler ways; helping him practice the language he was still unfamiliar with, holding his hand when he was too afraid to go outside, sitting with him in the middle of the night when he had nightmares. Subaru would have done anything she asked of him, no questions asked, back then; would still do it later in life, regardless of how the world and them had changed, and would never regret it.

Emilia’s dearest wish was for everyone in Fódlan to be seen as equal, for everyone to be recognized as people and treated as such. Understandably, Subaru wanted to grant that wish. Subaru had followed her to the Officers Academy for that reason, promising Aunt Fortuna to look after her since they both knew she was an airhead, probably because her father coddled her so much. Subaru was sure Aunt Fortuna had made Emilia promise to look after him, too, since the two of them thought Subaru had all the self-preservation instincts of a drunken lemming, but that was okay. He probably needed the supervision.

The Officers Academy, located at the Garreg Mach Monastery, was divided in three different Houses: the Black Eagles for the Adrestian Empire, the Blue Lions for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Golden Deer for the Leicester Alliance. Subaru, who was neither royalty nor nobility, had to be sponsored by Aunt Fortuna, the Head of one of the most important families in the Alliance, in order to attend and he promised himself he wouldn’t disappoint her, not even if he thought that the heir of the leading house in the Alliance was a terrible influence on Emilia. That heir being Anastasia Hoshin, who had already stated that she would work hard to bring a golden age to the Alliance—with a particular, cut-throat emphasis on the ‘golden’ part of her statement.

And it was not only the heir of the Leicester Alliance who would be attending the Officers Academy, both the Crown Princess of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and the Crown Prince of the Adrestian Empire would be there as well. As if Subaru making a fool out of himself in front of only one heir wasn’t a daunting enough prospect, Subaru mentally prepared himself to cause some sort of international incident at some point. He almost did, of course, a couple of times; but that sort of foolishness paled in comparison to what Priscilla did, outdoing any sort of stupidity Subaru had gotten up to by leaps and bounds. But that had come later, too late to stop and early enough to give them all plenty of time to regret letting it happen. Priscilla had, after all, saved Subaru’s life more than once during that one year.

But then, _everyone_ at the Academy had saved Subaru’s life at some point of the year, in many cases more than once; whether it was by blocking an incoming attack during one of their most difficult missions or simply reminding him about an upcoming test he had forgotten all about, Subaru had become indebted to everyone. And he had, without fault, repaid those debts with interests, during that one glorious, golden year, still pinned to his heart like a medal, like a beautiful but dead butterfly.

Beautiful but dead, like almost everyone who had attended that one glorious, golden year—Subaru included, death so close he could already taste it, as he had been tasting it for five years now.

But back then, even if it had been just one year, it had been so beautiful. Almost worth the price they all had paid.

The heirs of the three territories had been the Heads of their houses, though none of them had been particularly the strongest members; in some cases, they hadn’t been even close.

Anastasia and Vincent were far better strategists (since neither of them particularly liked the term schemers) than fighters, even if both possessed Major Crests and, in Vincent case, a stupidly powerful relic; and while Felt could hold her own in a fight there was no way she could hold a candle to someone like _Reinhard_. Oh, there were other Knights, good, talented, hard-working Knights, like Julius and Crush, even the most talented healer Garreg Mach had seen in years other than Archbishop Petelgeuse in Ferris, but it was difficult to think about anyone else when Reinhard was right there, making impossible feats look effortless and doing his damnedest to keep Felt from ever seeing the frontlines even in their mock battles.

Not that there weren’t good reasons for that; unlike the Alliance and the Empire, which had had their share of conflicts both internal and external but had no major loses to report, the Kingdom had suffered through the Tragedy of Duscur. Felt’s older brother, Crown Prince Fourier, had died at Duscur along with their parents, leaving his fiancée and then would-be queen Crusch to mourn him. Felt had survived thanks to Reinhard’s efforts alone; he had been a squire back then, allowed on the trip only because he had a Major Crest that had made it possible for him to reduce anyone trying to hurt his princess to a splatter on the ground. Reinhard had been knighted after that and appointed as Felt’s personal retainer, and he had taken that title quite seriously.

Subaru blamed that for the fact that, when it came to people who had screwed them over during the war, Reinhard sat at a very comfortable third place.

Even without his Blue Lions to back him up, Reinhard had no equal when it came to raw strength. If he had been able to get close enough to Enbarr, the war would have been much shorter, but the Empire had had numbers enough to not allow that. Priscilla had made sure of that.

Priscilla might not have been strong enough to dealt with Reinhard, but she hadn’t needed to in order to accomplish her goals; even if she had lost over half of her Black Eagles due to her own scheming, including Vincent and Cecilius, who when it came to power was second only to Reinhard.

Second hadn’t been good enough, though. But then, no one had been good enough to deal with Reinhard, Subaru included.

The Golden Deer had had plenty of strong members, such as Garfield, Ram and Rem, and Emilia herself, and though they had managed to stick together for the most part they had also not been good enough. Subaru couldn’t blame them for it, brawling and magic and even mastery over all weapons were just not enough when it came to Reinhard. But at least he didn’t have to worry about that anymore; no one did, Reinhard had, in his own way, been dealt with.

He wasn’t going to die still hung up over that, at least.

No, that was a lie; Subaru was going to die still very much hung up over that, because as much of an idiot Subaru was, Reinhard had proven to be even worse and he didn’t even have the excuse Subaru had of having always been an idiot. Which had been what had taken them all by surprise, he supposed.

If something had happened to Emilia and Subaru had gone stark raving mad about it, at least he could be sure that no one would have been too surprised over that.

The thing was that, of course everyone thought Subaru was an idiot, and, don’t get him wrong, he _was_. He knew he was; he was one hundred percent aware of it, and how this fact colored other people’s perception of him. Subaru had been scarily good at playing up that part of himself and making it work in his advantage. He had gotten more information about the inner workings and political issues of both the Empire and the Kingdom by sharing meals and lending an ear than Anastasia ever had with her spying, eavesdropping and bribing, back in the Academy. It used to drive her crazy. During the war, Subaru had to resort to plenty of those tools plus a pinch of torture and worse for all their sakes. They both had agreed, in a silent, implicit understanding, to not let Emilia know that.

It would have made her sad, and none of them wanted to give her any more reasons to be sad when there were already plenty to choose from.

Subaru was, against his dearest wishes, going to give her one more.

That didn’t bother him more than dying, but it was adding salt to the wound.

At least he had the comfort of knowing that whatever Emilia felt upon learning about his passing wouldn’t be worse than what he would feel if it had been the other way around; Emilia loved him, but not in the way he loved her, and certainly not enough to go mad with grief because of him.

Subaru had kissed Emilia once, before entering the Officers Academy, when he was fifteen and certain he was in love with her and would be forever. It had been a sweet thing, innocent, the kind of kiss more devotion and hope than actual skin that could have woken a fairy tale princess. It had also been what made Emilia understand that she would never be interested in that kind of thing, no matter who it came from. If Subaru, who was her closest and dearest friend, couldn’t make her feel anything other than confused, then surely no one else would be able to do better. Subaru had accepted that. Subaru had continued to be certain he would always love her the most, in any way she allowed, for the rest of his life. It had also made him understand that this meant he’d have to get his fill of physical affection from some other source. Subaru had kissed a lot of people after Emilia during his time at the Officers Academy. He had not kissed anyone since the war had begun in earnest. His mouth felt like it would taste the way his dark magic smelled: acrid like poison and rancid like stale blood.

His blood was fresh and warm in his mouth, but it tasted exactly as bad as he thought; it had tasted like that for quite a while now, and this wasn’t his first time tasting it.

He didn’t remember the first time, and there had been plenty of times in which he had tasted it, both in the middle of a battle and not, but the one time that came to mind was Gronder; the place where their unfortunate class reunion had taken place.

A battlefield with three fronts that ended up with most, if not all, of them facing old friends. Five years ago, Subaru wouldn’t have called all of them his friends, but he would have at least admitted that they were close to his heart; even Priscilla. Now, though, Priscilla had started a war that had been ravaging the continent for five years. Vincent had died, Felt had died, Reinhard had gone crazy, and the Alliance—Subaru’s home, Emilia’s dream, Anastasia’s ambition, had been fragmented, broken, torn apart by those who’d rather bend the knee before the Empire, turning their backs on everything they had worked for and believed in.

Fódlan tore itself apart under the weight of it all. The pressure exerted by Priscilla turning fissures into cracks.

At the Ball, Subaru had danced with Priscilla. Well, saying it like that might be misleading; Subaru and Priscilla had the notorious distinction of having danced with pretty much everyone who could have been persuaded to dance, regardless of their houses, loyalties or stations. They both had danced with the three House Leaders and their retainers; Priscilla had led Schultz around the floor while Subaru spun Beatrice around laughing all the while.

They had danced with each other and smiled at each other and ignored the warning looks more than one Professor directed at them sure they were up to something, and for once they had been wrong. That night, the only understanding between them was that everyone should dance at least once and they were both determined to succeed in that particular goal. Subaru had tried to make every one of this dance partners laugh, and Priscilla had been downright charming, or as charming as she could be, even as she pulled poor Professor Al to the dance floor for a waltz. Subaru had convinced Professor Halibel and even Sword Instructor Wilhelm to dance with him; the face Reinhard had made, as if he expected him to run away with his grandfather, had left Felt in stitches. She had offered to Knight him right then and there just for that. Subaru had laughed it off and dragged her to the center of the dance floor, but his heart had thudded against his ribs and he had, for a moment, almost considered it. He had considered how nice it would be, to be able to love another place and its people without it feeling like a betrayal.

As Subaru twirled in his friends’ arms, over and over, he had let himself believe in the future they would build together, just like this.

Back then everything had seemed possible: peace, union, even happiness.

Those traitor thoughts, that thrice-damned naivety of his, had led them all to Gronder again. A corruption of memories he had held dear, even if his House hadn’t quite managed to win the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, they had made everyone reconsider not having included ‘the Deer’ as well in the name.

It had led him to a red-haired man he once trusted whole-heartedly hurling a javelin at Patrasche that nearly sent both of them crashing to the ground. Subaru hadn’t died at Reinhard’s hands only because Cecilius had been there to stop him.

Handsome, proud Cecilius, who was nevertheless so very kind, so very honorable; who was always willing to lend a hand if only because he thought it the duty of the strong and made it his business to keep those he cared about safe. His dear friend Cecilius, who always wanted to challenge Reinhard despite having never won against him, and who nonetheless did it again, in those dire circumstances, because of Subaru.

Because, after the dancing and drinking and merry-making, there had been a misunderstanding the night of the Ball; and though it hadn’t been Subaru’s fault, the professors had worn these annoying, smug looks all of the next day, as if all their suspicions had been proven correct. The misunderstanding had been that Subaru had caught a glimpse of something pink at one of the windows and, as expected, his first thought had been that someone must have told Beatrice that there was a ghost up there and she had gone up there to investigate. The pink he had seen, though, had not belonged to Beatrice’s dress, but to Cecilius eyesore of a cloak; Cecilius who was drunk as a skunk, and who had flung himself at Subaru babbling about how he had been stood up. And that had been when the girl Cecilius had invited up there had walked in on them tangled on the floor, ignored all attempts to reason with her, and fled with what she must have thought was a juicy piece of information, since it had spread throughout the Academy by the following day. Subaru had received at least three platonic marriage proposals in the following weeks, because his friends were idiots who really thought Subaru was going to run off with Cecilius, of all people, if no one stopped him.

For all the mess that had been, it had also been what had made Subaru become actual friends with both Cecilius and Vincent.

Vincent, who seemed couldn’t be more different than Cecilius, but who was also kind and honorable; Vincent, whom Priscilla had killed.

Oh, no one had proof, Priscilla herself would probably have not even bothered to dirty her hands with the deed, but everyone knew that she had been the one to give the order. And the moment Vincent had died, Cecilius had left the Empire. Subaru had found him on his doorstep one morning, two weeks after the news of Vincent’s untimely demise had reached them, and he had been convinced it was a spirit that had come back to haunt him. Cecilius hadn’t let him live that down until the very end. Cecilius’ end, which both of them found at Gronder.

With his wild red hair and his right eye covered with an eyepatch, Reinhard had looked like King Reid. This was not a good thing. He was exactly as unhinged, as dangerous as King Reid. Cecilius had made him work for it, but everyone there had known how that was going to end.

How every fight between those two had always ended.

Cecilius had—he hadn’t even given Subaru the chance to try and heal him. Subaru’s healing magic was shit, as it had always been, but he had been willing to try.

There had been no time to try; not that it would have done much good if there had been.

Cecilius had—Reinhard had—they had both known that there was nothing Subaru could do at that moment.

It wasn’t fair.

Subaru was shit at everything but two things: archery and dark magic. Even as a Wyvern Knight, his flying was only passable because Patrasche was his wyvern, and Patrasche was the smarter of the two; he had passed the Certification Exam because Patrasche was more patient with him than anyone, more intelligent than any wyvern had any right to be, and she loved Subaru like it was written in her bones. But a Wyvern Knight was what he was, even if he had opted for a bow rather than an axe, and dark tomes rather than a lance, and an arrow seeped in dark magic was one hell of a thing and it more than made up for his shortcomings in other areas. It ate the flesh right out whoever was unlucky enough to get shot, it made them rot while alive; it drove most people mad in a matter of minutes. Subaru had been using those kinds of arrows a lot during the war, even his magic had grown more vicious over time, not unlike himself.

Subaru had, with all that malice and a hatred he hadn’t even known he was capable of, tried to kill Reinhard then; honestly, sincerely, from the bottom of his heart, he had tried to kill him with everything he had. With his fingers wet with Ceciliu’s blood, with the taste of his own blood in his mouth, with what felt like his chest torn open, his heart and lungs hanging outside his skin, he had used a magic so dark he was sure nothing would ever grow in that part of Gronder again.

But he hadn’t killed Reinhard; he hadn’t managed to, and he was still, to this day, not sure whether he should regret it or not. But that day he had regretted it, no question, no doubt about it. Even now.

And then Felt came back from the dead. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say she had never been dead, just on the run from the traitors out for her head, and she had finally been found. Reinhard, the Blood Knight, the Mad Knight, had finally found her and with his charge his sanity. But five years was too long; five years was too late. There was no making up for the blood her knight had spilled in her name during those five years, unable to tell friend from foe and not caring either way.

At least that had been enough to convince Julius to leave the Kingdom and join the Alliance.

Back then, in their school year at the Officers Academy, they had treated everything as a game; even poaching students from other house had all been in good fun. Pretending to kill each other had also been in good fun, and those who taught them to do it taught them well. They all were so good at it, it was the only reason the war had dragged on for so long.

And those who taught them to do it were almost all dead; most hadn’t survived the first year of the war.

Professor Theresia, who had retired from the Lion Guard of the Kingdom to become a Knight of the Church, who had sun-bright smiles and always a kind word ready, and absolutely no mercy when it came to sword lessons, had died with a knife in her back. They all had mourned.

Sword Instructor Wilhelm had followed his wife not long after, but no one could blame him; he had died taking down the stranger that had been masquerading as a student, and they had found him victorious in the field, surrounded by the corpses of impossible monsters, his sword plunged into the chest of the ash-skinned stranger, pinning her ribcage to the ground, a satisfied if not peaceful expression on his face. They all had mourned, Subaru a little more than the others.

Professor Clind, who was the Academy’s nurse, who had tutored Subaru in dark magic, who made the best pastries and the best tea, had died at the gates of Garreg Mach the day Priscilla had marched her army into it, trying to buy time for his students to escape. The ones who had known him had mourned, and Subaru had cried then, and he had cried months later, after returning to the ruins of the Monastery with a small scouting party to look for survivors; they never found the body, but he had stepped on a broken monocle he would have recognized anywhere and that was telling enough. Professor Clind would have never stood a broken monocle. Subaru had raided his office afterwards; he had stolen his favorite tea set and all of his books, he had grabbed everything he thought he could carry and bribed and bullied and begged his companions to help him with what he couldn’t.

Professor Halibel had returned with them to the Alliance because it was his home, and he had died defending it and them from the same impossible monsters no one had explanations for during the first year of the war. He had been the one who first had come across information about the Abyss beneath Garreg Mach, about the fourth army they didn’t know they were up against, about darker secrets that betrayed everything they had believed in. Some of them mourned his passing, Subaru among them. He decided to follow the clues Halibel had left behind. Oh, this investigation, this horrible knowledge would go to waste with the world in the state it was, with Subaru now so close to his own demise and precious few allies who were aware of what he had discovered, but it had been almost worth it. It would have almost been enough to change the tide of the war, if it had reached the correct hands.

Once, Subaru had confessed his undying love for Professor Roswaal in the middle of the courtyard to buy Garfield enough time to break into his office and snoop and possibly steal anything suspicious he found there. The look of sheer disbelief on the man’s face was still a dearly cherished memory, and, surprisingly enough, he had been quite gentle in his rejection even though he must have known that Subaru was up to no good. He had even gifted him a dozen of ginger cookies fresh from the bakery the next day. It just went to show how far Subaru was willing to go to get his hands into information he thought he needed to have to keep those he cared about safe. That had been, after all, how they had found out about Beatrice.

From that, it was only obvious to surmise he would throw himself head first into the mystery of the Abyss, the horror wrapped in vengeance of Those Who Slithers in the Dark, and even the lies the Church itself had woven about the goddess. Subaru had risked life and limb and nearly lost both on several occasions while trying to find answers for all of these only in part to honor Halibel’s memory, and it would all go to waste. He hoped it would go to waste, his only partners in crime in that endeavor had been Rem and Beatrice, and Rem was dead and he hoped Beatrice would leave it alone because if she didn’t she’d probably die, and he’d chose her life over any advantage this knowledge could give them. It was far too late to change the course things had taken no matter what they learned now, regardless of who learned about it; no use crying over spilt milk.

Two professors were still alive, but it hurt more to think about them.

Professor Roswaal had proven himself exactly as untrustworthy as everyone had always thought he was, and had fled the Garreg Mach and offered his services to Priscilla—but Beatrice had chosen Subaru, and he would never give her a reason to regret it if he could help it. Every waking moment not spent on trying to keep the Alliance from dissolving and those close to him from dying, he had spent with Beatrice. She had been a friend, confidant and teacher during those dark years; she was the sole reason Subaru could still find it in him to smile some days. He would, no doubt, miss her the most, even if his heart was first and foremost Emilia’s, even if Beatrice’s heart was a pretty piece of stone.

Professor Al, who had beaten Felt at the resurrection part, had taken a good look at the mess Priscilla had made, shrugged it off and joined her anyway. It had hurt, but at least Subaru had known to not expect anything different from the man.

At least it gave him someone to blame for all the things they had lost, all the people that had died because of this damned war.

Anastasia had lost her father, Lord Ricardo, Emilia had lost her own father and Aunt Fortuna, a loss that Subaru also felt acutely but refused to claim for his own. There were plenty of other losses he could claim for himself, after all, and each one bit just as deep, just as sharp.

Ram had joined the Empire following Roswaal and had been used and discarded by the man for her trouble, she had burned to death in a trap that had taken Garfield with it; Rem had died in an ambush while trying to rescue Crush from her execution after she had been accused of treason, they had only barely managed to recover the bodies of the two of them, but that had not been enough to stop Ferris from taking his own life, losing their best healer and lifeline. They had thought Felt died, at that failed rescue attempt, and in the following years Reinhard had killed Cecilius in his grief, Otto had been executed by the Empire while he had been acting as a spy for the Alliance, Subaru had slit Joshua’s throat after finding out he had been the one to carry out that order. Julius, already lost and with nowhere else to go, hadn’t even tried to stop him.

He had mourned, in his own knightly way, but his eyes had been dry.

Subaru hadn’t managed even that much and he had hated himself for it, even if no one had ever expected anything different.

Subaru would have preferred it if he had, like Anastasia and Julius and Otto, spent all of his tears during the first year of the war, when every new betrayal tore their hearts open and tainted every single memory until it was an unrecognizable splotch, not of _how could they?_ but _how could I have been so blind?_

But Subaru had always been the crybaby of the group, much to his chagrin. Even now, after all the ways betrayal had become a familiar, expected companion, after all the broken promises, the dead and the dying, after burying and burning and putting their loved ones to rest in whichever way they could, he still cried every time.

When his end came, he couldn’t help but wonder if, with their tears all spent like that, there would be anyone who cried for him. It was an ugly, selfish thing to want, almost as ugly and selfish as the relief he felt when he thought that at least in this way he wouldn’t have to see any more of his friends die.

His end found him near Derdriu, his own home. They had done everything possible to prepare, to have a fighting chance; Anastasia had worked herself and everyone else to the bone just so they’d have a flimsy hope to overcome the natural disaster that Priscilla had become. Subaru had really thought they could do it. He had gone as far as to ask whatever remained of the Blue Lions for help; Julius had promised he would bring reinforcements. Subaru had thought it was only fair he was the one to go; after all, the Alliance wasn’t his home, it wasn’t fair of them to ask him to die for it. If they all fell, at least Julius would survive. That had been what he had thought.

No one at the Empire should have had any idea of their plans. There shouldn’t have been anyone anywhere near the route they had chosen so carefully to lay their ambush. And yet—

As if they had known all along, they had been waiting for them, prepared to crush this fledgling hope of theirs. Subaru was lucky he had taken scouting duty, he supposed. The moment his allies saw him and Patrasche drop down the sky in a hail of arrows, they would get at least some warning.

Fuck. Subaru hoped no one was stupid enough to attempt a rescue; they had outgrown that kind of stupidity years ago.

(Still, Subaru would have, but that was because he was, as pointed out, an idiot.)

Tragically, Subaru hadn’t died then. Patrasche had always been the smarter, strongest, more resilient of the two; so, even with her wings torn into shreds by the arrows, she still found it in herself to grab Subaru while they both plummeted down and cushion his fall as best as she could. Beneath him, Subaru felt her bones breaking when they met the ground; he heard the sickening, squelching sounds of the soft parts of her body caving under his weight. He felt his own bones breaking, his own softness, skin and muscles rupturing, tearing open, bursting because of the impact; but he still survived.

He only had the most basic of knowledge when it came to faith magic, but his faith, albeit arguably misplaced, had never wavered; he scrambled up, rolling off Patrasche and onto the scorched earth, barely managing to get onto his knees and elbows before he heaved, an animal wail covered in bile and blood crawling up his throat and past his clenched teeth. His body fighting him all the way, he called up his lasts reserves of faith and let the most ineffective healing magic in the world wash over Patrasche’s mangled body. It was a cruel thing to do, and no doubt ending her suffering would have been kinder, but Subaru had always been cruelest with the things he loved the most. His love had been the ruin of too many people to regret it now.

That was when, and how, Reinhard found him.

Right. Because they had been trying to meet with the Kingdom’s army, marshalled under Felt’s banner of the Queen of Resurrection.

A Queen that had overcome death in her people’s time of need, a Knight that had regained his sanity under her command, that alone should have won them the heart of the masses. Meanwhile, Subaru was stuck still seeing the pile of corpses they had made, left behind them, trodden on. If he were smarter, he would hate them both.

And so, it was not to Subaru’s credit that his first reaction upon seeing Reinhard had not been a Nosferatu to the face. It was simply that he had poured everything he had into trying to keep Patrasche alive, and she had let him because she was a good girl and she loved him, and she hadn’t wanted to let him die alone, even if it meant she had to suffer for longer than necessary. She had done the same, anyway, in trying to break his fall, and for the same selfish reasons; she had only given Subaru more time to feel more pain. But their end was growing closer. It was only a matter of time, and all three of them knew it.

Reinhard, as if to balance even if only a little bit of his prowess at absolutely everything else, was even more shit at healing than Subaru. So, at this worst possible moment, he was completely useless.

Reinhard knelt next to him, his hands hovering hopelessly over his broken form, knowing deep down there was nothing he could do. Subaru could see his stupidly handsome face all scrunched up, his one good eye welling with tears that were, on the whole, too late to mean anything.

Subaru would have liked to say something to him, he thought, as his body gave up all pretenses of dignity and he slumped forward, face first into the ground. Reinhard had caught him, as Subaru had always believed he would, and held him against him, searching for a position that wouldn’t worsen his wounds, that wouldn’t hurt him as much as breathing did. In this, he, too, was a fellow idiot.

Subaru wanted to say ‘you’re an idiot’, maybe; ‘good job finally getting your head out of your ass’, probably, if it hadn’t been such a mouthful; ‘I’ve been waiting’, and ‘what took you so long?’, and ‘what should I have done to make my words reach you?’, and ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘I did my best but it wasn’t enough’, and ‘we needed you with us’, and ‘I missed you’.

Subaru must truly have been in the throes of death to even consider saying most of those things; not that he’d be able to even if he tried. One of his lungs was definitely punctured and the other had most likely collapsed; he was lucky he had lasted this long.

There was, also, a part of him that wanted to tell him ‘we made a promise’, simply because that was the one thing that would hurt him the most. And he wanted him to be hurt; he wanted to shake him until his brain started leaking from his nose since it did him no good inside his cranium.

But, in the end, he wasn’t able to tell him anything. His last words had been for Patrasche, who having seen her duty done, had passed away still cradled in the gentle lie Subaru had woven for her: ‘it’s fine, we’re going to be okay’, words that he had fought to get out of his throat.

In the end, Subaru left Reinhard with nothing but splotches of blood on his white knightly clothes, three red lines on his cheek, smeared there with his fingers. Whether he had meant that as a reassuring touch or an aborted slap, only Subaru himself would know.

Here at the end, as always, Subaru had been, was still, would remain, an idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not featured: Al as Byleth in this AU. This is his Crimson Flower run, which is why no matter how much they try everything goes to hell for the other factions.  
> Also not featured, since I thought no one would want to read that: Subaru sleeping his way through half the student body and at least two faculty members for ~~fun and profit~~ information.  
> This abomination happened becase my other Re:Zero story was somehow too feel-good and apparently I needed to balance that out.  
> edit: some mistakes have been fixed; also, guys, this was supposed to be a _one-shot_ , I had a _plan_ , and now I'm going to have to write a continuation to this, but it's going to be one (1) more chapter, and it's going to be super-short, and then I'm done with this AU, alright? There are other worlds waiting for these characters to suffer, okay? Okay.


	2. red sky at night, sailor’s delight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2) Fire Emblem: Three Houses!AU Part II. Al can turn back time and he has done just that more times than he can count just to save Priscilla. It's too bad that his goals don't exactly align with those of the goddess who granted him this ability in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right. So, the Major Character Death warning still applies to this chapter, sorry. This is a happy ending, honest. It’s just that things get worse before they get ~~weird (and I do mean weird)~~ less than worse.

red sky at morning, sailors take warning

Technically, they had won. Priscilla had achieved everything she had set out to do, and that had been Al’s objective all along, so they both had gotten what they wanted.

The Leicester Alliance had put up a fight, but divided as it was it had only been a matter of time until it crumbled beneath its own internal conflicts; Priscilla wasn’t patient enough to let such a thing happen, so they had been forced to speed the process along by means of slaughtering its leaders and their children.

They had marched to the heart of the Alliance and disposed personally of those who would not bend the knee, which were made up by some of the Golden Deer’s best and brightest; at least those who had managed to survive the past five years of war. The number was heart-numbingly heart-breaking.

Al had always liked Emilia, who was too hopeful and good for the world most of the time, but that had been why she was so loved. So relentless, so determined to protect those who watched her back, so fucking brave. He was sad to see her die, Priscilla’s heel digging on her back, her sword raised high as the sun crowned her victorious in scarlet and gold. And poor Emilia, a broken doll acting as footstool and prop, a martyr and a message rolled in one grisly, bloodied package. But there was no saving her, if she had stayed alive people would have inevitably gathered around her; that was the kind of person she was. Al understood this, he accepted this; this was the reality of conflict.

Anastasia had asked to be allowed to go back to Almyra, after the sudden but not entirely unexpected revelation of her connections with the royal family there, and she had sworn she would leave Priscilla to conquer Fódlan in peace, would even ally Almyra with whatever was left after she was done with it. She had asked, not begged, because she had always been sharper than most people have her credit for. But by then Priscilla was beyond mercy, beyond pity, beyond herself.

Al was sure that Priscilla had liked Anastasia; she used to find her amusing back in the Academy. Once upon a time, she would have let her go just for that. But once upon a time was a time lost to time, Al thought; at the present moment, she chose to take her head and leave her body to the carrion-eaters. Al sighed, but it was too late to do anything.

The Leicester Alliance fell, as Al had always known it would simply because he would allow for nothing else. Priscilla, with her blade still wet with the Hoshin’s heir blood, turned her sight to her next target.

The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, that at this point was held together by little more than faith and a loyalty that was all but woven in the very blood of its children, fell last. And every victory cost them more than expected. Al had to rewind time and rewind time and rewind time, time and time again, not because he cared for any of the strangers he led to battle, but because he’d lose otherwise. Most of the children he had taught at Garrech Mach had been lost to the tides of war and had to be replaced by far less talented individuals that had to be replaced, and on and on.

But even that didn’t matter—he had seen them all die a dozen different times in a myriad of ways, ranging from quick and painless to gruesome and unjustifiable, even for this war. It had been inevitable that at some point he’d cut his losses and accept he couldn’t save everyone; and, anyway, Al had never had intended to save everyone, only Pricilla. Only Priscilla, and if that goal demanded sacrifices, that was just another thing he had to live with.

And still, the Kingdom made them work for it; the Empire had to pry its victories from the jaws of the children of Faerghus, from their cold hands, from their very ribcages.

So many children, young adults now, but Al was so old he’d always think of them as children, were ground down to acceptable losses in this merciless conquest. Most of them with Priscilla’s blessing; most of them by Priscilla’s orders, which was why Al couldn’t (can’t, wouldn’t, didn’t) save them.

They became sacrifices in the altar of her dream and Al was only its most fervent believer.

It all came down to this: the Black Eagles were no more, there was only Emperor Priscilla. And Al.

The Kingdom fell, eventually. After trial and error and error and error. Reinhard killed Priscilla. Reinhard nearly killed Al. Reinhard killed Priscilla. He killed Priscilla. He killed. He killed. He killed _killed killed killedkilledkilledkillkillkillkill—_

Al nearly went mad from how many times it took him to get it right. At some point, he really thought they wouldn’t be able to stop him. But they did, eventually. Priscilla had to use every trick up her sleeve, the second Crest that had been inflicted upon her, poison, ambushes, traps, battalions, all their relics, dark magic borrowed from the people she had sworn to destroy, a dagger that killed with a graze, the reanimated corpses of Reinhard’s allies—it took all of that and it still was a close call.

After Reinhard, dealing with the remains of Faerghus’s army should have been easy, but it really fucking wasn’t. Felt was a natural leader, she was smart and she played dirty. Her entrenched army took her toll on them. When they finally managed to capture her, Priscilla’s army was so spent that she had started considering conscription as a necessity. When the guards had brought Felt before Priscilla, a prisoner in her own palace, everyone knew what the retaliation for those losses would be.

So Felt had died, but, like the rest of her kingdom, like all of her subjects, it had come at a price.

She struck as fast as a viper, getting past the two guards who had been holding her down before Priscilla, and the dagger she had kept concealed had flashed silver before tracing a crimson arc across Pricilla’s face with its edge.

It had all but sealed her death sentence, but everyone had known that Priscilla intended to kill her, so this changed nothing. She died with a red-stained smile on her face.

Al, having no more pulses left in him, could not erase the wound. Priscilla planted her banner in Fhirdiad with a scar that left her left eye all but useless. When Al felt he could, he tried to turn back time again, but it only took him, as he had expected, a few hours back. But he had to try; for her, he would always try.

They began their march back to Enbarr, a pitiful ghost of what their army had been, gnawed down to the bones. But the Kingdom was still not done with them, because it was spiteful like that, and perhaps they had earned the full extent of its spite.

The Kingdom’s foundation rested upon the oath taken by the Houses of the Royal Family, their Sword and their Shield. It was, then, only to be expected that as a child of one of these Houses, even a stray traitor knight would heed their call for help.

Julius Juukulius faced Priscilla in single combat and won. Al turned back time before Priscilla’s heart stopped beating and he murdered the young man in cold blood; in the middle of their duel, he stabbed him in the back and felt not an ounce of regret.

After coming so far, he wasn’t allowed to feel regret; he wasn’t allowed to feel anything. His heart that did not beat sat still and heavy, a millstone in his chest.

He took no joy in snuffing out the lives he had once helped to grow, to thrive; but he’d kill all of them all over again if it meant saving Priscilla, only regretting that it had to be done, but not doing it. If it had saved her, he’d walk that path again and again and again. But—well, it hadn’t saved her, had it? He hadn’t saved her. They had been wrong in their chosen paths, their chosen methods, the expected outcomes.

He was damn sorry about that, at least.

He was not sorry he chose her; he was not sorry he tried to save her, even if it meant the death of everyone else. He was just sorry he failed. There was no saving Priscilla, in the end; she had made sure of that.

The end found them like this: Satella, primordial goddess of creation, thousands of years gone and who knows how many of those gone mad, lost the last remaining thread tying her to this realm. The goddess that slept in his head, that had been gone for five years, either asleep or ignoring him or having completely forgotten that she was tethered to him, woke up one day.

She had woken up, after the purge Priscilla had subjected her own allies to, and she had looked for someone; she had asked _where is he?,_ sleepy and confused at first, and then she bellowed the words with despair burning in his veins like salt, and then with a scream of fury that could have melted the skin off his bones. There hadn’t been anything he could do before the earth itself revolted against him, against Priscilla, so sure of her ultimate victory, and the few allies she had kept by her side—there was nothing anyone could have done before all of them were swallowed down into the depths and crushed by the dirt and the rocks.

The goddess didn’t play fair, but she played favorites and, unfortunately, Al wasn’t the most favorite of them all.

Al couldn’t for the life of him tell who was her most favorite of them all (and it didn’t matter now), or why it had taken her this long to realize that something had happened to them.

In a voice clearer than anything he had ever heard from her, she said: **_I love him_**.

Her voice had the clarity of steel hitting bone; he could feel it in his teeth.

Too late he realized the weight behind that simple statement.

It was her verdict, her resolution, all the explanation she needed for what she was going to do.

It was, he realized, a death knoll. Not for him, never for him, he barely registered in the fringe of her awareness as it was; her addled mind only took notice of him as a convenient transportation method. It was for the world at large. It was, he realized with his heart splintering, for Priscila, too.

Al begged her. He went to his knees, in the mental landscape they shared, an empty, dark hall in which stood a stone throne where she slept most of the time, and begged her to spare Priscilla. The one life he had fought for, the one person he wanted to save, the one who made his own heart of stone sing; he would have done anything for her, he had done everything for her,

In the throne room, where time was an option, Al tried to make a goddess understand what he had experienced, what he had lived, what he had learned from all the budding timelines he had pruned.

In the throne room, where time was a whim she indulged only sometimes, Satella _refuses_.

She denies every choice he’s made in his life.

She pushes him back. She herds him like a sheep to the slaughterhouse. He’s forced back, step by step he undoes his life, as she denies all of his choices, and every path he’s taken at every fork in his life is branded the wrong one and reduced to ashes. He backtracks, step by step, and every step the wrong one.

She refuses him.

She denies him.

She denounces him, his path, his choices, his life, his everything. His very existence is stripped of meaning, a flawed thing to be discarded.

Step by step, whittled down to nothing, not even regret, until he— _falls_.

the flow of time shatters under him like a crystal dome and drops him into the turbulent icy waters beneath.

 _..._ he _—_

 **_d r o w n s_ ** _..._

in her anger, in her rejection, in her anguish, in the loss of a love that was never his

the loss drags him down

the loss grabs the whole world and makes it crumble in its grasp

he, too, crumbles before the

cutting, _piercing_ , tearing, ripping, **mangling** , cleaving, hacking, scraping, splitting, **savaging** , _cracking_ , rupturing, **fracturing** , stabbing, _maiming_ , lacerating, gouging, mauling, butchering, **skewering** , shredding, rending, _severing_ , sundering, bursting, **smashing** , _fragmenting_ , gutting, **shattering** , fraying, unraveling, eroding, _corroding_ , gashing, _rending_ , **clawing** , slicing, wrenching, wringing, peeling, twisting, _bruising_ , disjointing, dismantling, **beating** , battering, _pummeling_ , thrashing, bludgeoning, distorting, **contorting** , flagellating, _crushing_ , gnawing, wrecking, _blighting_ , **undoing** , destroying, **ending** , _drowning_

**_drowning_ **

**_d R o W n I n G_ **

until

.

.

.

a drop of {mercy} reaches him.

No, not mercy; the goddess is above such things.

Pragmatism is what spares him.

He’s nothing to her, but he’s everything she has and she plans to use him again (and again (and again)), until he gets her what she wants, whatever the hell that is.

Al breathes. He wakes up, still gasping for breath, still fighting the waters that had thrown him into this familiar shore.

He fell off the bed in a room that he somewhat recognized, still gasping, still choking, before the door flew open, a man of his mercenary band calling him to arms and behind him, three young faces he most definitely recognized. His time, the time of the world, began anew.

Satella had taken six years and discarded them like trash simply because they didn’t suit her purposes; Al supposed that it was pretty in character for her, he didn’t know why he was surprised. At least this worked in his favor as well. It gave him another chance, encompassing a myriad other smaller chances, to try and save Priscilla. He would save her, if that meant toppling the Empire and slaughtering its puppeteers, the ones that had used her and twisted her into what she had ultimately become, then Al would do that. He just needed to know how, and he had a pretty good idea where to start.

When Priscilla had still been pretending to support the cause of Thales, after he had stopped masquerading as one of her relatives, they had managed to capture Roswaal’s sister or whatever he said she was to him; the little girl that hadn’t changed, hadn’t aged a day from the moment he met her at the Officers Academy. The little girl that hadn’t cried when she had been told that she was the last remaining survivor of the Golden Deer, although she had never been an official member, that hadn’t flinched when Priscilla had told her exactly what she was planning to do with her, that had said something about Priscilla’s supposed allies that had piqued Al’s curiosity, as if she knew better than all of them.

The little girl that Priscilla had ripped apart, taking a bright, smooth stone from inside her chest before shoving it into another one of her experiments, turning a corpse into a monster. The little girl that wasn’t a little girl at all, except in all the ways it really counted; and Al had stood there and let it happen.

No, worse than that. Way worse. He had held her down.

He still wasn’t sorry, he felt no need to atone; but his choices had led to failure once already, so there was no harm in trying a different approach.

That reasoning was what led him to choose to lead the Golden Deer House this time around. If he needed information, his best bet was to worm his way into the House with the nosiest students. In spite of their loyalty, the Black Eagles certainly had not been the best when it came to gathering information; something the Golden Deers excelled at, being a bunch of gossip-loving busybodies with absolutely no sense of self-preservation when it came to snooping and meddling. One in particular Al remembered standing out. It was this one in particular child that Al chose to approach in order to begin his own snooping and meddling.

After his first day of classes was over, Al nearly gave Subaru a heart attack when he approached him out of the blue and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“So, kid,” he began, making sure there was no one around who could hear them. “How do you feel about investigating church secrets?”

A sun-bright smile lit up the boy’s face so fast that Al would have missed his first expression of shock if he hadn’t been looking for it.

Well, fine. Whatever. Al and this child were going to team up exclusively to commit heresy, and he was sure, pretty sure, that the goddess-forsaken goddess living in his head would whole-heartedly approve of this. So, with that in mind, Al nodded.

“Great. There’s something I want to look into.”

 _For Priscilla_ , he thought, his loyalty set in his heart like stone, at the same time that the goddess he alone could hear, not talking to him at all, murmured:

 _I love you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so this chapter is super late, because when I was planning it, I really thought I could write Al and, as it turns out, I cannot. :/  
> Once I got the idea for this chapter I really wanted to write it, because it completed the last chapter in a way I hadn't thought of, but I had lot of problems actually getting it written, so I just gave up and now there's this. Thing.  
> Well, the FE cross-over it's over, so next up it's the Fate series. That should be fun.  
> edit: some minor mistakes fixed, let me know if you find more.


End file.
